Greetings Cards

I recently had some of my paintings made into greetings cards.

http://pinterest.com/flowapowaart/greetings-cards/

I decided that I would start with my local art paintings - The Liver Building in Liverpool,  Ormskirk Clock Tower, Ormskirk Bandstand and Lathom Park Chapel in West Lancashire, thinking that these would be nice to send to friends and family around the world.

After much um-ing and ah-ing, I plumped for www.moo.com. They were running a free business card promotion at the time, and they had good reviews from fellow crafters on the Folksy forums.

My cards arrived within a week, and were on very high quality card stock...however I was horrified to see white lines across the top of some of my cards. Fortunately Moo have excellent customer service. They explained that I had not allowed enough extra image at the top and bottom of the cards to allow for slight cropping differences. To Moo's credit, they do explain this on their website - I was just too eager to get going to read it all properly! And Moo then offered to reprint the whole order with faster shipping for free. Yay!

I was so pleased with the resulting cards that I decided to try a few local stores. To my delight, an independent newsagents / card shop, and a chain book store both said they would take my cards! The independent shop bought 15 cards on the spot - and the thrill of seeing them in pride of place as you come into the shop was amazing - I was ginning from ear to ear!

The book store, being part of a national chain, is a much slower process - they have to send them off to head office for approval. The shop manager was very optimistic that they would be accepted, but warned that it might take a couple of months.

I have created a pin board to display my cards http://pinterest.com/flowapowaart/greetings-cards/

They are all available in my Etsy shop www.FlowaPowaArt.etsy.com





Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie

My First Oil Painting Lesson

On Tuesday I the first of two oil painting lessons. I've had a set of Daler-Rowney Georgian oil paints in my loft for 20+ years, and never really known what to do with them. Amazingly they are still in good nick, and all I needed to buy was a pad of paper - I went for Daler-Rowney Georgian.

The technique we used was surprisingly similar to watercolour - a medium I am very familiar and happy with.

The first thing to do was tape the paper to a board and get out my Burnt Umber paint and a rag.

First we applied a wash of oil to the paper. Dipping the rag in white spirit and then a dab of paint, we used a sweeping side to side motion from top to bottom. If you've ever applied a watercolour wash this was just the same, using a finger in a rag instead of a brush.

Then we lifted out the areas we wanted to stay white, using either a hog hair brush or a finger inside rag. We were working from a very poor photocopy of a painting by Mona H....(the photocopy was too bad to read the name) - however working from a poor photocopy does stop you from slavishly following the original.

Next was simply to add the paint, using it exactly as watercolour paint but instead of water we used white spirit. Simple!

Here is my work in progress. I need to do more, but since husband and son both have asthma, I have to wait for a sunny day and work outside!

Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie

Exciting news - I have had my first commission!

Exciting news - I have had my first commission! Woohoo!

After two and a half day's procrastination, it really is time to buckle down and get on with it.  The commission I have been given is to paint two separate watercolours of two local pubs. The first is the Buck I'th Vine Inn, Ormskirk, a grade 2 listed building and one of the town's oldest buildings.

So that my final piece will be a really good painting, on larger works I always do at least one smaller painting first, concentrating on each section that I think might be tricky. Being a poor penniless artist I have to make every stage of the painting process work for me, so my smaller paintings are complete works in themselves that I can market separately to the final piece. In this case my final piece is already sold - lucky me!

Here is my first finished piece, measuring 5" x 7".

I'm happy with this, and don't think I need to do any more smaller paintings, so the next stage is to sketch out the whole pub and get to work painting!





Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie

My community page www.facebook.com/AughtonArtists

My community page www.facebook.com/AughtonArtists is beginning to take off, and over the next few weeks 2 more artists will be joining me, taking the total to 4...great news! So now I think it's time to create a page just for me.

Creating facebook pages is quite simple...on the top right hand side of you facebook home page you will find a link to the "Help" facility. Type in "create page" and it will give you the link. I tried to post a link here but the URL looked specific to me, and that wouldn't help you at all!

From then on facebook gives very good prompts to tell you what to do. TOP TIP, when you are asked to like your page, do it! I didn't, and am having a terrible job trying to like my page afterwards.

I used my folsky shop avatar as both my profile pic and my cover story pic for continuity.

It's still very much work in progress, I have to upload all the  photos of my work yet...but here is my new page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/FlowaPowa-Art/397251977002164

If you have time, please like my page - when I have a few followers I can change the name to something easier to remember!

Have a great day!




Thanks so much for dropping by, I do hope you enjoy reading my blog. Why not leave a comment to say hello so that I know you called? Feel free to link back to your own blog too.

Stephie